Saturday, October 25, 2008

A First Time for Everything

The prescription for Saturday's run? Zone 3 run intervals. Three times 8 minutes of them. In the comments section of my schedule? These should be quite uncomfortable. Good times!

I wanted to run on flat ground so this meant that I needed to head out from my neighbourhood. I decided to run from Edworthy along the river. It was sunny out, but absolutely crazy windy out. We're talking wind gusts 32 to 63 km/hr (20 - 40 mph). As I headed toward downtown the wind was at my back so it almost felt like it was pushing me along at times. I was supposed to warm up for 10 minutes, then do 4 x 20 second accelerations followed by 40 seconds of easy running. Then the fun started with my 3 x 8 minute zone 3 intervals followed by 5 minutes of easy running. Finally cool down.Looking at a graph of my heart rate I did a pretty good job. I started out on my run, then realized that I'd forgotten something at my car so had to turn back. Then, about 8 minutes along I was running along the pathway approaching a woman out walking her dog. I'm not sure what breed this dog was. It looked like a boxer but the colouring seemed a bit different. Just as I was about level with the woman and her dog he lunged out at me as if he was going to attempt to take a chunk out of my knee. I screamed and jumped off the pathway and was clearly shaken. See the HR spike in to Zone 2? She apologized and chastised her dog but I just wanted to keep going in the opposite direction from them.

I got my HR into Zone 3 pretty quickly on the first interval and it was pretty easy to keep it there. I ran it in an 8:26/mi pace and felt uncomfortable, but still good. On my 5 min of easy running I turned around to run into the wind and up until this point I hadn't quite realized how strong it was. I knew the last interval would be tougher. I ran the second interval with the wind at my back. It was still relatively easy to keep my HR in Zone 3 but my pace had definitely slowed a bit, down to 8:50/mi. The third and final interval was a whole other ball game thanks to the wind. I knew I wasn't going anywhere near as fast and I almost felt like I wasn't going anywhere as I tried to push in to the wind. I slowed down to 9:31/mi on this interval and I creeped up into Zone 4 more than a couple of times. After the interval I walked for a bit, then started an easy jog into the crazy wind. All of a sudden it was like something in my stomach rebelled and I nearly lost all of the water and part of a Luna bar that I consumed on to the side of the path. I didn't wind up throwing up per se, but I definitely had something come up to the back of my throat and ugh...it was the grossest thing ever. I so wanted to be done at this point in time but I chugged some more water to get the vile taste out of my mouth and just kept jogging back to the car. Blech. I've joked about running hard enough to throw up before, but this is the first time I've come that close.

Anyhow, all in all, it wasn't too bad of a run because I definitely accomplished my goal. I kept my HR in the required zones and obviously ran to a point where I felt uncomfortable. All said and done I got in 6.31 miles for the day.

***And, I was able to reschedule date #3 with the guy from Tuesday, so its all good!***

Angry, the folks that did my test said that there is a zone between zones 2 and 3 that they term junk. The theory is that in this zone is doesn't do anything to boost your endurance in an aerobic state, but it also isn't helping you in an anaerobic state either. They mentioned that not everyone recognizes this, but I wanted to throw it into my graphs to make sure that I wasn't hanging around in the junk zone too much.